The recent rise in popularity of portable electronic devices such as eReaders, smart phones, and tablet computers, is causing a dramatic shift in the way that people read books and other printed material. However for people who own a large number of physical books there is no method for them to gain access to an electronic version of their physical books without purchasing another copy of the book in eBook format.
Digital media content consumers (e.g. readers of eBooks or digital music listeners) generally resent the need to re-buy at full price an electronic copy of a physical work that they already own. This resentment is evident in the profusion of “format shifting” of digital music from CDs to digital files (e.g. MP3s) for use on portable music players.
However, format shifting is not practical for physical books to eBook format. Whereas for owners of digital music CDs, it was possible to format shift the digital music from CD to MP3 format using a personal computer equipped with a CD-ROM reader and freely available software (e.g. Apple™ iTunes™); format shifting is not readily possible for physical books. One method of format shifting a physical book involves scanning each page of the book. While there are physical book scanning apparatuses (see: http://www.diybookscanner.org/), physical book scanners are single purpose bespoke hardware, and by no means as commonly available as personal computers and CD-ROM readers. As such, physical book owners are left with no practical means of format shifting their physical works into eBook format.
This difficulty in format shifting of physical books has contributed to the increasing availability of eBook content piracy on peer to peer file sharing services such as BitTorrent.
Furthermore, unlike musical recordings which have shifted from vinyl 45s and 78s records, to 8-tracks, to audio cassettes, to CDs, to MP3s over the last several decades, physical books have been printed on bound paper for centuries. The format stability of physical books has allowed for vast collections of physical books to be accumulated by individuals. Without a practical means of transferring these physical books to eBook format (short of re-purchasing each physical book in eBook format), an individual is unable to realize the benefits of owning and reading books in eBook format on a personal electronic device (e.g. eReader, tablet computer, or smartphone), and may be driven to acquiring eBook copies of their physical works through illegal channels (e.g. BitTorrent).
While industry associations such as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) have chosen to combat content piracy through criminal and civil prosecution of content pirates, companies such as Apple and Netflix have reduced the desirability of pirated digital content among non-technical users by providing conveniently packaged, high quality, digital music and movie content at a reasonable price point.
However, book publishers and eBooks vendors are unable and/or unwilling to offer a discounted eBook to an owner of a physical book, because it is impractical for them to validate that an individual is a legitimate owner of a physical book. Vendors of eBooks have considered offering owners of physical works electronic content bundled at the point of purchase or based on electronic sales records, or based on a photograph of the physical work (see U.S. Pat. No. 7,542,625 and US20130019293 A1). However they have not addressed the issue of digital copy leakage which occurs when a physical book transfers ownership (e.g. it is sold at a used book shop). Nor does U.S. Pat. No. 7,542,625 or US20130019293 A1 account for digital content leakage through books which are loaned (e.g. between friends or from a library).
When one considers that physical books are a widely resold item (used book stores are common as are used book trading websites), an eBook vendor or publisher has no way to ensure that a single physical book is not used as ownership proof to claim many eBook copies. Consider for example: Alice owns a physical book, Alice uses the physical book to purchase a discounted eBook version of the book from an eBook vendor. Alice then sells the physical book to Bob. Bob uses the physical book to purchase a discounted eBook version of the book from an eBook vendor. This eBook copy “leakage” is unacceptable to the eBook vendor and the publisher of the book.
Several book publishers and book vendors have developed systems for offering print and electronic book bundles. That is, when a person purchases a print edition of a publisher's title, they may also purchase the electronic edition. Several methods of print+eBook bundling, including their limitations, are described below:
Print+eBook bundling can be accomplished by publishers and book vendors at the point-of-sale. Point-of-sale bundling allows publishers to be satisfied that they are providing an eBook to a person who has purchased a print edition of one of their titles. One method of point-of-sale involves a person who has just purchased a print edition of a book, giving their name and email address to the book store staff Bookstore staff sends the name and email address of the person who purchased the print book, to the publisher. The publisher emails the person who purchased the print book, an eBook edition of their print purchase. This type of point-of-sale eBook bundling system was tested by the publisher “Angry Robot™” and the bookstore “Mostly Books™” in 2012 (http://the-digital-reader.com/2012/08/10/angry-robot-e-book-bundling-plan-triples-its-print-sales-at-a-uk-bookstore#.UcjvDPnveYQ). The limitations of point-of-sale eBook bundling as described directly above are several:                The process is labour intensive and error prone: customers must write down their names and email addresses and the title they purchased. This information needs to be typed into a computer either by the bookseller or the publisher.        The process allows customers to keep the eBook, even if they return the print edition for a refund or store credit.        The process is difficult to scale up to a large number of booksellers. The level of labour involved in point-of-sale eBook bundling means that it is not a practical solution for deployment to a large number of booksellers.        
An alternative method for offering bundled print and eBook editions is for publishers to produce print books each with a unique code (such as QR Codes or individual serial numbers). These unique codes can be used by the purchaser of a print edition to claim a digital edition when scanned using a smartphone (QR Codes), or when typed into the publisher's website. Manning Press is currently offering print and eBook bundling using this method (http://www.manning.com/ebookoffer/). There are several limitations to the method of printing unique codes in or on physical books. Unique codes are not secure against use by someone who has not yet purchased the print edition. That is, a unique code can be scanned or copied by an unscrupulous customer in a bookstore, without having to have first purchased the print book. In order to counter the threat of digital theft from a physical bookstore, some publishers such as h.f.ullman (http://www.ullmann-publishing.com/en/) only print unique codes inside of books, which are then shrink wrapped. The unique code printed inside a shrink wrapped book cannot be viewed until the book's shrink warp is removed by the customer after purchase. An alternative method of securing the unique code is to cover it with a scratch off layer. Scratch off codes have been used for titles published by Microsoft™ Press (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoft-press/archive/2010/11/11/microsoft-press-companion-ebooks-are-now-available-for-download.aspx). If the unique code is covered by a scratch off layer, it allows both the purchaser and the bookseller to ensure that the unique code printed in or on the physical edition has not previously been used to claim a digital edition. A further downside of print and eBook bundling using unique codes is that they increase the cost of production of a printed book, because each individual book is printed slightly differently. Books and other high volume print jobs are traditionally printed using offset printing techniques rather than digital printing techniques. Offset printing has the advantage that the cost per unit (e.g. book) decreases for large volumes—a printing technology ideally suited to printing books for sale to a large consumer base of readers. However, offset printing techniques require that all pages are identical. That is, it is not possible to print a unique code onto a page of a book using offset printing techniques. And while digital printing costs continue to fall, the cost of protecting the unique code printed into a book using shrink wrap, or a scratch away cover, will always result in an increase in book production costs for publishers choosing to offer bundled eBooks using this technique.
Several publishers have adopted an “honour system” wherein readers who purchase a print edition of one of their titles are encouraged to send an email to the publisher to request the bundled eBook edition. The principal downside of this technique is that it is labour intensive for both the reader and the publisher. Furthermore, this method provides virtually no protection from abuse by unscrupulous individuals.
A recent USPTO Application (US20130019293 A1) and PCT Application (PCT/US2012/046056) outline a system and method for providing access to an electronic version of a physical book based on a dynamic challenge system. The method describes a system which would allow a user to prove the he or she was in possession of a physical book. While the method described does include a geographic security element to prevent users from using the system inside of libraries or bookstores, the system does not provide any security against a user who borrows a book from a library and claims access to the eBook edition after returning to his/her home. Additionally, the method described does not provide security against a user who purchases a physical book from a bookstore, claims the eBook edition when at home, and then returns the physical book to the bookstore for a refund. Furthermore, the system described does not provide protection against a single physical book being used multiple times to claim a companion eBook.
On Jun. 2, 2009, U.S. Pat. No. 7,542,625 B2 was issued to Amazon™ Technologies Inc. for a “Method and System for Access to Electronic Version of a Physical Work based on User Ownership of the Physical Work”. The method described and claimed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,542,625 B2 describes a system whereby a user could prove their ownership of a physical work by means of providing images of their physical work or through the use of cross referenced billing record databases. A limitation of the method described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,542,625 is that it does not allow for the user to download and access an offline version of the digital edition of their physical work. Rather U.S. Pat. No. 7,542,625 only provides for users to be able to access digital images or scans of the physical work, not an associated but different digital edition such as a re-flowable text ePub. Indeed, the patent is specific in stating that the electronic version of a physical work is comprised of “images of the physical work”, rather than an eBook which comprises reflowing scalable text. The system described appears to be a patent on a system to allow an Amazon.com customer to be able to view an expanded book preview, if they can show that they own a physical edition of the book.
Because there is no requirement to mark or deface the physical copy in the method described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,542,625 B2, the system does not protect against the situation where a book is borrowed from a library and used as proof of ownership, nor does it handle the case where a book is purchased from a local bookstore, used as proof of ownership, and then returned to the local bookstore after the user was granted online access to the electronic image version of the physical book. Furthermore, the method does not protect against the case where a single book could be lent between multiple people who can each use it to claim online access to the electronic image version of the physical book.
A further limitation of the system described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,542,625 B2 is that it proposes using billing records as a proof of ownership. While online billing records are proof that an individual purchased the physical book at one time, they are not proof that the individual remains the owner of the physical book at the time they seek access to the online electronic image version of the physical book. Additionally, physical billing records such as receipts are not well suited to proving ownership of a physical media carrier because receipts are not physically connected to the physical media carrier and as such could be given from one person to another in order that the second person could fraudulently claim ownership over the physical media carrier.
Therefore there is a need for a means by which owners of physical works, such as books, can gain access to discounted (or free) electronic versions of said physical works, that is not subject to one or more limitations of the prior art.